A year or so ago, I wrote a blog entry called “Laying out the Damn Pennysaver” and I talked about how someone could get a book published while working a day job and trying to have a social life… Read the blog entry if you get a chance, but the short version is that if you write one hour a day at lunch, you will eventually have something complete. It may not be fast, but it will be consistent and the Tortoise and the Hare shows that consistency will eventually win out as the fast get tired.

Anyhoo, I was thinking about the Pennysaver article recently because I just started a two-week vacation and I was planning to do 8-hour shifts of writing to get ahead in my writing of the new book… And yesterday, I ran into one of the big problems I had before my “one hour a day” method… It is really easy to get overwhelmed with everything you want to do at once… You have all these hours ahead of you that you “think” you’ll be 8 times as productive as you are during that one hour…It doesnt work that way…More time equals more time to procrastinate and do other stuff (Facebook anybody?) I’ll be honest this blog entry itself is just a way to avoid doing… But since this is writing, I’ll allow it… And if it helps anyone, then its worth it…

My new plan to fight procrastination is to fight it with…. procrastination???? Meaning have to have multiple projects going on (that are important to where you want to go with your life – and I’m not talking about watching TV or framing a Shazam! photo – which I did this morning)

Having multiple projects means that if you don’t want to do something on Project 1, you can procrastinate and do something on Project (2 or Project 3, 4,5 or 6). That way your productivity increases overall, and you still have the feeling that you avoided doing something you didn’t really want to do at the time. Then when you have to do the next step on the 2nd project, you can Read more

Hey it’s almost time for another round of WIDOMW (What I Did On My Vacation) posts. Last year was a flurry of events including events promoting my new book (at the time) – Lost Boys of the Bronx– The Oral History of the Ducky Boys Gang. ( c’mon you knew I had to advertise it at least once LOL), NY Comic Con, an Irish-American Writers party with some big names, a Halloween Parade, and a few charity events – where one sparked one of the greatest nicknames ever – the Peeping Princess… Click the WIDOMV category over there on the right to read some of those adventures…

Starting Friday (10/7), I’m starting another 2-week October vacation. Now if you’re from my regular day-job, I will be in Cuba without phone or email and please stop reading right now however.

Ok, good it’s just my friends now, so I can be honest – I’ve got a few events lined up – NY Comic Con, the annual Irish-American Writers & Artists Awards party, my best friend Jeff’s show down at the Brighton Bar, and God knows what else… Check my Facebook or Twitter page to see where I’ll be, and check back here after the fact and I’m sure I’ll have a report of what happened…

But my biggest plans for the next two weeks may not sound thrilling to some, but to me it’s heaven. For the next two weeks, I’ll be splitting my time between my home-office and the local Scotch Plains library working on taking a big chunk out of my new book.

“What new book?” Well, you may want to check out this link for a little better background on me and my project. But, the short version is that for the last few months I have been interviewing some really cool & interesting people who get dressed up in costumes for various reasons and finding out what makes them tick. The reasons people put on a costume are a lot deeper than you would think.

Well anyway, speaking of really cool costumers, I attended a really cool costuming event yesterday (10/1/2011) down in Flemington, NJ called SuperHeroes for Hayley. It was a charity event set up by HomeTown Club in Somerset, NJ to benefit the family of a 12 year old girl with brain cancer. The Star Wars costuming group I belong to called the 501st Legion – NorthEast Remnant Garrison was requested by the fabulous Amber Love and we showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on Saturday morning.

Well we’re finally out of the woods on Hurricane Irene… The last few days have been pretty intense with the buildup the media has been giving – And while Jackie & I survived it pretty much intact, not everyone was so lucky. There was a river running down the main street of our town (and we aren’t close to any regular rivers), and the reports and pictures from Facebook show that people in other parts of town had some real damage.

My good friend Anna Zelikman took a bunch of pictures of Scotch Plains-Fanwood showing the damage that Hurricane Irene did to our town.

As you can see, it was no joke – Yes, that is a picture of a tree that split down the middle and crashed into the street AND landed on the side of some poor bastards house in there.

Now Jackie & I did the smart thing and stayed indoors throughout the hurricane so we can’t really comment on the actual devastation out there outside of Anna’s pictures, but we did watch a LOT of TV and see a lot of my Facebook friends postings about what happened… And that dear reader, is the theme of this blog.

What I learned about Human Nature from Hurricane Irene (and the earthquake a few days earlier).

First, pre-hurricane, people were already skittish about ol’ Mother Nature. A couple of days earlier there was an earthquake in Virginia that was felt all the way up to Maine. Here in NJ we felt it as well, but it was very small and lasted maybe 30 seconds tops. But it was very telling about human nature and that leads us up to my first Human Nature insight:

1. People want to know EVERYTHING about something before they react.

https://jameshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JamesHannonLogo.gif00jameshannonhttps://jameshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JamesHannonLogo.gifjameshannon2011-08-28 22:44:062011-11-05 22:35:46What I learned about Human Nature from Hurricane Irene (and the small earthquake a few days earlier)

My friend, co-worker, artistic supporter, and mentor passed away about 3 and a half weeks ago. I started writing this about 2 weeks ago, but I was hoping to have more info on what happened by now. But, nobody (who I know anyway) has any new information other than that there will be a “Celebration of her Life” in two months. So figured I’d just go with this post instead of waiting anymore.

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Last Thursday (7/7/2011), I got an email from a friend informing me that my old boss passed away. Most of you who will read this won’t know her, but her name was Mary McDonald. The story of the moment (7/11/2011) is that she came home from yoga on Friday 7/1/2011 and had either a stroke or a heart attack. Her apartment is under police seal pending an autopsy/investigation, so who knows what that will uncover. But until that, I’m not going to speculate on how she died, but rather how she lived.

I met Mary back in March 2000. I had interviewed with her for a consulting job at PaineWebber. After burning out on a previous job, I had taken a 3-month sabbatical between consulting jobs to try and make a go of Lantern Media Web Design. But that didn’t go over so well (a blog entry for another time perhaps), and after much prodding from a particular recruiter who thought I would be a perfect fit for this job, I decided to give it a shot.

Mary gave me a phone interview that went well, and I went in for a face-to-face interview with Mary, and three other interviewers. Other than one interviewer (who I found out over the years has an industry-wide reputation for not-liking any candidates), I had a GREAT set of interviews. I had such good connections with 3 of the 4 interviewers that I almost felt like I was goofing off there since each of the interviews were more friendly than business-like (FYI until this interview, I had never met any of them). That recruiter was right on the money about me fitting in there – I was pretty much told I had the job before I walked out the door.

So now I was working for Mary and some other cool people in an organization that people liked (at the time anyway). Work life was good again, and slowly I started to enjoy coming to work again. All the work got done in an efficient manner, but there was a friendly environment that I had missed in the prior few jobs. Mary actually supported my film-making aspirations, and gave me a lot of freedom to work on my Richard & the Young Lions documentary (as long as my work got done – which it did) – Mary was thanked in the credits of that movie.

The 501st Legion visits a really cool museum in Garden City, Long Island called the Cradle of Aviation.

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

If you’ve been following me at all, you probably know that I’m a Star Wars geek, and that I go to local events dressed in a Star Wars costume. Just check my photo albums here or on Facebook to see visual proof. You could also read any of my numerous blogs by clicking “501st” or “Star Wars” over there on the right under Categories=====>

The short version (for me anyway) to get you up to speed, is that I am a member of a group called the 501st Legion. The 501st is a group of geeks like myself who like Star Wars to the point of spending the time and money of creating professional quality costumes of the “bad guy” characters in the movie. (I also belong to the Rebel Legion which covers the costumes of the “good guys”. This particular event, I was a TIE Pilot “bad guy”, so I’ll focus on the 501st angle).

I realize there is a tendency to think of people who costume as loner freaks, but most of the people I’ve met doing this are sane and productive members of society – We have moms, dads, cops, firemen, lawyers, teachers, programmers, musicians, writers, artists, etc within our ranks. If we weren’t wearing a Star Wars t-shirt, you probably wouldn’t be able to pick us out of a crowd. LOL

One of my favorite quotes lately is “Just because my hobby is different than yours, doesn’t mean my hobby is any dumber than your hobby.” Plus our hobby has an outlet that helps make the world a better place. A large portion of the events we attend are charity events, and our costumed groups have helped raise well into the millions of dollars for various charities. And we bring LOTS of smiles to the kids who come out to our events and see characters magically come off the screen into their world. It’s a really cool feeling being part of this.

One thing that I should mention here is that it isn’t just Star Wars costuming groups that enjoy these benefits, but most costumers, be it Star Trek, Superheroes, Disney princesses, etc. (People who know my “wannabe marketing genius” mind are laughing right now because they know what’s coming next)

I am currently working on a new book that will hopefully be finished in early 2012. It will be all about the various costumers out there – How they got into it, Why they do it How they got their cool costumes,What their families and friends think, Cool stories while costumed, and everything in between. So basically I am looking to hear from any costumers who are willing to tell their story for inclusion in the book. So if you are a costumer, and have a cool story, email me at jameshannon@lantern-media.com and let me know. You can be any type of costumer (including anime, re-enactors, mascots, gorilla-grams, etc) – the only exclusion is that the book will be relatively family-friendly, so I probably won’t be using any adult-themed stories. Nothing against it personally, but as wise costumer Amber Love wrote in her Amber Unmasked blog, “there’s a time and place for everything.” :)

Ok, sorry for that tangent, back on target about the Cradle of Aviation event.

The Cradle of Aviation is a really cool museum on Museum Row in Garden City, Long Island. They’ve got a whole lotta exhibits on the history of flight – with a slant towards Long Island’s involvement in it. Grumman Corporation was a HUGE contributor of exhibits to the museum and there is some really cool stuff there like flight simulators, lunar landers, space suits, planes of all types, etc. It even has a Fire Dept museum and historic carousel on the property – See the pics below for a taste of it.. HIGHLY recommended by your pal James…

Don’t worry, I’ll let you know in big bold letters when to stop reading if you don’t want any spoilers

Friday, June 17th, 2011

Well, after waiting my entire life for this, FINALLY a Green Lantern movie came out. In case you didn’t know, your old pal James (whose company is called LANTERN-media.com by the way) has been a HUGE Green Lantern fan since he was a kid.

Sure Superman and Spiderman were cool, but there was just something about having a ring that can construct kick-ass weapons based on the wearers imagination really appealed to this Irish kid from the Bronx – And the fact that he was “green” didn’t hurt LOL And every summer, I’ve watched as a bunch of less-deserving superheroes get their moment on the big screen.

Well not this Summer… Finally Green Lantern hit the theaters today!

I’ll be honest, I was pretty worried about this movie… Waiting an entire lifetime for something only to have it suck was a real concern. I really tried to keep my emotions in check about it – and by its release, I was fully expecting it to be more disappointing than the Green Hornet movie with Seth Rogan last year.

Which was a really good strategy on my part. Having low expectations meant that as long as Jack Black didn’t star as Hal Jordan (an actual possibility from a past script that still frightens me), it was probably NOT going to be a disappointing movie.

So we found a local theater and went to the matinee. Jackie wouldn’t have stayed awake for the car ride to the theater, let alone the whole movie, if we had went to the midnight showing, so we went to the first showing of the next day. We also decided to watch the Non-3D version since it was earlierRead more

Today is June 17th, 2011 – which is the 7 year anniversary of the passing of Howard “Richard” Tepp – The lead singer of Richard and the Young Lions (also known as RYL). I wasn’t thinking about that milestone intentionally today, but it kinda jumped out at me accidentally, so it seems like the universe really wanted me to make a note out of it. and what better way than a blog? :)

Other than today being the release of the new Green Lantern movie (just remember, my company name is LANTERN Media Productions), it wasn’t supposed to be an extra-ordinary day. I was just working from home, trying to decide which showing of the movie I will see.

Side Note: Jedi-J (his preferred name, don’t ask LOL) is one of my interview subjects for my new book about costumers, and we’ve become friends over the last few months. He does a killer Obi-Wan Kenobi (the Ewan McGregor one), and has a really interesting story that will come out partially in my new book, but really deserves his own book – If nobody else grabs him by the time I’m done with this book, I’m seriously going to consider writing it myself)

So, I was talking with Jedi-J about my RYL documentary and he asked how the band was doing nowadays, and I told him that Richard Tepp had died back in June 2004 – I forgot the date, but it was 4 days after I had completely finished my documentary on him and the band. And Jedi-J was really shocked that he had died, and started asking questions about the days leading up to his passing, and how he felt the documentary became a lot more poignant knowing that.

https://jameshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JamesHannonLogo.gif00jameshannonhttps://jameshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JamesHannonLogo.gifjameshannon2011-06-17 11:49:472011-11-05 23:06:14Richard and the Young Lions - 7 years later

Its been a crazy two weeks, so I’m trying to keep up with the individual blogs before I forget to… They’ll be shorter than my longer-winded ones :)

Casualty at the Saint, Asbury Park, NJ – Friday, June 10th, 2011

I drove down to Asbury Park to see one of my best friends Jeff Hornlien play his first show with his new band “Casualty”.

If you haven’t heard by now, Jeff’s old band “The RiffSurfers” (that I managed – against my will LOL), are no more. <insert huge sad face here> No dramatic fight between the 5 J’s (Jeff Hornlien, Jimmy Diamonde, Jenna D’Onofrio, John Kraemer & James Hannon (umm, that’s me), but things weren’t happening, and we all eventually went different directions. I went on to promote my book “Lost Boys of the Bronx: The Oral History of the Ducky Boys Gang“; John became Johnny Rox and joined the band “Tasting Grace” (see my review of their shows here and here); Jenna joined the successful cover band Decades Invasion and is probably playing somewhere near you this weekend (and next weekend, and the weekend after that); Jimmy became James Giunta, Certified Hypno-Therapist and currently has a thriving practice in Red Bank, NJ. And Jeff started up this new band called “Casualty” with old RiffSurfer drummer Sean O’Connor and bass player Nicky Vitucci. So now that you’re all caught up with the history of the band, lets move on to their first show.

As biased as my previous review was, this one will be also. But, unlike the previous review, I became biased towards Black 47, not because of friendships (which came later), but because I was just a super fan going back to their early days (1989-1991) when they were playing in the Norwood/Bainbridge section of the Bronx – which just happened to be my old neighborhood.

I’m kinda embarrassed to admit this, but I never did see the band live when they were playing back in my old neighborhood. They had played in the local Irish bars, and by this time I had already given up drinking at the ripe old age of 16 (more common in my Irish-American neighborhood than you would expect)

I don’t remember who exactly, but “someone” recommended Black 47, and I picked up their CD – probably at Crazy Eddie’s on Fordham Road. I was really surprised that I liked their music. I DID NOT like Irish music at all at that time tho – too many parentally-forced listenings of “Wild Colonial Boy” and “The Unicorn” on WFUV’s Sunday radio program will do that to you.

Ok, so its been a few months since Lost Boys of the Bronx – The Oral History of the Ducky Boys Gang was published, and the marketing blitz has died down a little bit. There’s still a few outstanding things there that might catch fire again, but the craziness of a book release is over and I can think straight again… Or as much as I could do before the craziness anyway… :)

Instead of sitting back and enjoying the free time that I’ve been looking forward to, what does your friendly neighborhood author decide to do? Get started on another project of course!!!

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FYI: I saw some Senator taking crap this morning on the news for sharing an innocent Halloween costume with his staffers, which kinda inspired the mini-rant at the beginning of this. I’m sure they had something else on him, but I didn’t listen long enough to find out. Before I saw that clip, I was just going to post a simple summary of yesterdays events on the USS Intrepid… Indulge me for a few paragraphs, and I’ll get right into that.

Outside of my home and work life, there are a couple of aspects to my life lately that people who don’t know me well are surprised by:

The biggest thing right now of course is that I’m the author of “Lost Boys of the Bronx: The Oral History of the Bronx“. Other things that I do/have done are that I have an MBA (but who cares right?); I’m also a filmmaker who wrote, shot & directed the documentary “Out of Our Dens: The Richard and the Young Lions Story”; and I’ve done music videos for artists such as The Grip Weeds, The RiffSurfers, and Shelly Riff. If you scroll thru my blog and/or Facebook page, you will find lots of references to those aspects of my life.

But what people who only know me from the aspects of my life above REALLY get shocked about is the aspect that this blog entry will cover.

First, you can buy a personalized copy of the book at: http://Lantern-Media.com/signedbooks It may even cost less than the online bookstores too since their prices fluctuate based on the market. Paperback costs $15, while the hardcover costs $20.

Most, if not all the online bookstores carry it:
Amazon.com carries the paperback, hardcover, and Kindle versions
Barnes and Noble Onlinealso carries the paperback, hardcover and Nook versions
Borders carries the paperback and hardcover versions
Authorhouse (my publisher) carries the paperback, hardcover, and e-book version

I am also finding that more and more physical Barnes and Noble bookstores are carrying buy ativan online no prescription versions of the book. The next time you go into one, please ask your local B&N to carry Lost Boys of the Bronx: The Oral History of the Ducky Boys Gang (ISBN: 9781452020549 for the paperback which is more likely to be carried)

Current Barnes and Nobles who have carried Lost Boys of the Bronx are:
call before going to check current availability

https://jameshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JamesHannonLogo.gif00jameshannonhttps://jameshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JamesHannonLogo.gifjameshannon2011-01-17 14:39:482011-01-17 14:39:48Where can you buy Lost Boys of the Bronx / Ducky Boys Story?

Note: This article was written for Back in the Bronx magazine in Winter 2006. New information came in and some of the details in the story have changed in the years between this article and the publishing of Lost Boys of the Bronx: The Oral History of the Ducky Boys Gang. I chose to leave it the way it was originally published.

A Bronx Tribute to “The Wanderers”

By James Hannon of Lantern-Media.com

A native Bronxite’s tale of how Hollywood came to the Bronx, and how the resulting movie influenced his life.

Published in Back in the Bronx Magazine, Winter 2006 issue, Vol XIV, Issue L1

In 1979, a movie by the name of The Wanderers came out. It was based off the book by Richard Price and starred a then-unknown actor named Ken Wahl. It also had a tremendous supporting cast that is too big to list here.

My sister’s boyfriend Louie really sold me on this movie a year or so earlier by telling me they were filming it near the Dollar Savings Bank on the Grand Concourse & Fordham Road, and that they had a bunch of old cars lining the surrounding streets and they were filming. This was a big deal to me, so I was definitely looking forward to it coming out.So, when it finally came out, I was horrified to find out that it had a rating of “R”. I was only 12 years old and five long years away from being eligible to see this movie. Ratings actually meant something back then, and I couldn’t imagine any kid’s parents letting them see “R” movies. I was crushed that I couldn’t see it.

My 19 yr old sister and Louie went to see it and told me that it was great, and that it opened with a shot of the RKO Fordham movie theatre and Alexander’s Department Store, and had aLOT of other Bronx locations! I thought my neighborhood was about as far from Hollywood as you could get, but this movie was filmed in my neighborhood — And I couldn’t see it!

https://jameshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JamesHannonLogo.gif00jameshannonhttps://jameshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JamesHannonLogo.gifjameshannon2011-01-01 15:24:212011-01-01 15:24:21Tribute to the Wanderers - Originally published Winter 2006 issue of Back in the Bronx

Originally this was going to be a blog entry on this cool review I got on the Irish Voice newspaper website today, but I realized that the Scotch Plains Christmas Blizzard of 2010 is just as worthy to talk about…

I’ll talk about the book stuff first since I think its pretty major – AND it will let me end the blog with the blizzard videos and pictures… So here goes…

After shoveling out from the Christmas Blizzard (see later on), I sat down to surf the net a bit, and I got a Google Alert email telling me that
“James Hannon” and “Lost Boys of the Bronx” was mentioned in a news story entitled “Don’t Bet Against Spider man“.. Didn’t know what connection I had to Spiderman, but news is news right?

Popping the article up on my screen, I realized it was from the Irish Voice newspaper and was written by “Off the Record” columnist Mike Farragher – Now things made sense…. A few weeks ago, I had went to the Irish-Mexican Alliance benefit (see my blog from then for what that was all about) and I met Mike in person there. We’ve been “virtual” colleagues for a while since both of us were part of the Irish-American Writers & Artists group and had a lot of the same friends (most notably god-amongst-men Larry Kirwan – who somehow is getting mentioned in every blog lately LOL) – We finally met in person, and I passed my book to him hoping he would find the time to check it out…

Everyone knew this was coming – kinda… In the days prior, there were reports of it being anywhere from a dusting to 2 feet of snow… Would it come on Christmas Day or the day after – or not at all??? Details were sketchy, but “something” was gonna happen… Eventually reports started remaining consistent and we were gonna have a Nor’Easter the day after Christmas…

I was kinda hesitant to do it because I wouldn’t really call the Ducky Boy “gangsters” since they were like 13-16 years old at the time. They were tough kids for sure, but there really wasn’t any connection to organized crime. I expressed my concerns to Lorcan Otway, the awesome curator of the Museum, and he understood my concerns, but told me not to worry.. While his museum has an element of organized crime, its full mission is to show “American Gangs” not just the Mafia. He also includes the Underground Railroad as an exhibit in his museum, so he is serious about that distinction. Well, the Ducky Boys are an American gang, so I agreed to doing the reading at the Museum of the American Gangster, and we set the date for Thursday, December 16th, 2010 at 6pm.

I started worrying shortly afterward that doing a book reading on my book might be a little difficult. If you don’t know already, it is in an “Oral History” format, so it reads almost like a movie script as the interviewees tell the story in their own words – sometimes alone but more often interacting with other interviewees. Basically my problem was that I would have to read stories with multiple characters speaking. And I’m not Rich Little – who can do great character impressions…

At one point, I came up with a great idea (to me anyway) – Being that I originally planned this to be a documentary film (see my books introduction for how that fell apart), I had the original interviews filmed and digitized on my computer… So all I had to do was show the clips to the audience and I would kill two birds with one stone. Not only would it be an interesting take on a book reading, but it would also mean that all the video I shot/digitized/edited wasn’t going to go to waste. It was win-win all around. I called Lorcan to see if that was ok with him (and technically feasible), and he thought it was a great idea too, so we were off to the races!

https://jameshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JamesHannonLogo.gif00jameshannonhttps://jameshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JamesHannonLogo.gifjameshannon2010-12-19 20:53:322011-11-06 17:41:07Review/Blog: Evening with the Ducky Boys at the Museum of the American Gangster